Financing levels for Albanian health care remain very low and, for the last decade, the sector emphasis has been on how to do more with less. A key problem facing the government after the transition to multiparty democracy in 1992 was finding the financial resources to maintain essential health services, given the very small government budget.

Hospitals remain publicly owned, most of them by the Ministry of Health. It plans to reorganize hospitals at three levels: national, regional (prefecture) and district. Albania’s ratio of hospital beds to population is among the lowest in Europe.